


the language of light

by meritmut



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (mildly), Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, Lingerie, Praise Kink, Temperature Play, pre-Episode 100, this was supposed to be 2k words at most i don't know what happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 23:22:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11367756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: Nights like this demand vulnerability of them both.





	the language of light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



His throat moves against the collar and Keyleth wets her lips unconsciously.

“You look so good, babe,” she murmurs, voice soft, and watches as the pretty pink blush staining his cheeks begins to creep slowly down over his neck and chest, a tantalising bloom of colour that does funny things to her heart.

His eyes darken, pupils blown wide by the unabashed desire in her voice.

Oh, thinks Keyleth: oh, no— _good_ doesn't do you justice at all.

He looks more than good, like this, a picture of languid grace laid out under the firm weight of her straddling his thighs. Arms above his head, wrists crossed delicately on the pillow, every last freckle and birthmark on display between the ribbons of the harness wrapped around his torso—it takes her a moment's searching to locate the word for just how he looks right now.

More than _good,_ the muscles in his arms flexing under her needy stare, his body glossed in moonlight, he looks _delectable._

“So perfect.”

She isn't sure whose idea it was, the harness—only that they really should have done this _ages ago_. The intricate lattice of black silk snakes over his shoulders and around his sides, a single strap connecting it to the band of velvet around his pale throat while the dainty arrangement of fine mesh covering his nipples forms what could, generously, be termed underwear, but might more accurately be named _temptation_.

More ribbons, of green satin this time, restrain his right wrist to the bed above him.

(Green like her vines: his gift to her.)

“I can't even tell you how amazing this thing looks on you. What it makes me want to _do_.”

It makes her generous with her praise, to be alone with him like this: no hesitation in the quiet spaces of the night, no stumbling over her own tongue with embarrassment when the only eyes on her are so full of devotion you could wade out into the depths of them and never see the other shore. Maybe she won't ever be able to articulate her desires without feeling her cheeks heat up like braziers but this—telling him how _good_ he is, how beloved, how beautiful, how much and in how many ways he makes her blood sing and her heart race with _want_ —she can do, and does, every chance she gets, because there are few things in the world sweeter than the way his body responds to her quiet praise; the way she can unravel him with nothing but her voice and the things it does to him to hear it.

“I'm just…not sure where to start.”

Vax watches her through half-lidded eyes. “Wherever you like.” His dark lashes flutter as her fingers trace blazing paths over his abdomen, mouth curving in that soft hazy smile she adores—the one that means he's truly at ease, at peace in the totality of his surrender to her care and her needs.

And _oh,_ how she needs.

It steals her breath away, sometimes, even now, just how deeply she craves that surrender. She looks down at Vax and something in her chest tightens: her heart, wild, impetuous organ, skitters like wingbeats beneath her breastbone at the naked trust in his eyes, warmth blossoming in her middle at how readily he _submits_. It bleeds through her like light, like the late flowering of summertime in the valley, like the slow unfurling of fire at the world's end where the gilded lip of morning pulls back the veil of night, dawn bleeding over the horizon in a sea-green haze before it catches all alight and turns to gold.

She feels that gold in her now, a wide river borne up out of the wellspring at her heart.

“Will you be good for me?” she asks, dragging her fingers down over his twitching stomach muscles to dig into the sensitive spots above his hipbones. Vax pushes through the fog of pleasure long enough to gasp out an affirmative and she rewards him with a swift kiss, nipping at his lower lip to make him part for her then running her tongue over the spot to soothe.

She doesn't need to see the blush colouring his features or hear the uneven breaths he takes to know how affected he is: she feels it every time she tilts forward and his arousal presses hot and hard against her thigh and it's playing _hell_ with her plans of going slow tonight, of toying with him a little, coaxing him higher and higher towards release without ever letting him find it and taking her own sweet time in guiding them both to a desperate shattering peak, of _ruining_ him in all the ways she knows how.

(He looks like he wants to be ruined.)

“Be anything you want, Kik,” he murmurs, “just say the word.”

There's something about the way the harness curls around his body, all beautiful slender lines of fine muscle and scarring, ink and birthmarks and those hidden sensitive places she can't get enough of touching, tasting, kissing, that makes her throat feel dry, and even though she wants nothing more than to take her time tonight—to hold him on the edge for as long as she can, working him with open-mouthed kisses and the press of her sharp teeth to the line of his throat and the slopes of his shoulders and the satiny softness of his inner thighs, pushing him to the brink again and again until he's whimpering beneath her, robbed of breath and _pleading_ for release, she'd taken one look at him in that gorgeous getup and known neither of them were going to last that long.

Her heart gives an unsteady thump.

 _Mine,_ it says with every beat: _mine, mine, mine._

 

*

 

Her mouth lingers over his and he _is_ good, doesn’t chase when she pulls away, but his hips snap helplessly up into hers and for a moment the pressure of him between her legs makes Keyleth _ache._ She rocks against him, instinctively seeking more of that burning friction against her core.

“Look at you,” she barely recognises the sound of her own voice as she inches back to safer ground, sliding her palms up across his chest until she can loop her index finger around the ribbon attached to his throat and _tug_. “You’re so gorgeous,” she sighs, low and crooning, admiring the way the motion makes him arch upwards into her touch, “and all for me.”

The slender line of the harness draws taut against her knuckles as Vax’s head falls back against the pillow. “The _mouth_ on you,” he groans softly.

Keyleth snorts, leaning down to rest her chin over his heart and gently bite at his nipple through the silk. “I thought you liked my mouth.” Nudging the mesh aside she takes him between her lips, flicking her tongue over him until he’s panting and straining with the effort of keeping his wrists crossed where she left them. His long hair spills out over the pillows with each toss of his head, feathers and beads strewn through it like the star-scattered night; he looks _wild,_ crow-black eyes gleaming with lust and wonder in the darkness. Wild, and beautiful, and hers.

He’s _perfect._

“—do,” Vax manages, “fucking love your mouth, Kiki.”

“Mm,” she laughs around his nipple, holding his gaze while she traces circles over it with the tip of her tongue before pulling away to give the other the same treatment. And then, because she’s slightly insatiable for the sounds he makes and ever-curious to see what others she can get out of him, and because it makes her bold to know that her need to _take_ corresponds perfectly to the need in Vax to _give,_ “what else?”

The urge to mark him properly takes her and Keyleth straightens up, flattening her hands over his ribs. Her nails scratch lightly over a scar there and Vax gives a soft grunt. “Your hands,” he says, biting back a moan when the warmth of her skin flares to _heat_.

Gathering embers in her palms, she pushes that heat out to her fingertips where they press into his soft middle—so different to the way his own hands feel, careworn and rough with a lifetime’s use, his callused fingers curl and uncurl above his head and he _writhes_ under the scorching pleasurepain of her touch, blunted nails digging crescent moons into his skin as she turns him by inches to a creature of silver and fire.

She catches her name among the disjointed pleas tumbling from his lips and for a moment her heart is gripped by a love so fierce it overwhelms her ability to think. Moved by feeling alone she leans forward to replace her hands with her mouth again, grounding herself in the reality of Vax beneath her in an attempt to feel less like a rudderless ship set adrift, tossed this way and that on a sea of sunlit waves. She follows the path her fingers had taken over his abdomen, dividing her attentions between soothing his reddened skin with kisses and torturing it further, an interplay of lips and tongue and teeth to mark him _hers_.

(Not that he needs it; _I’m yours,_ as he’s so fond of telling her, he needs only the vaguest semblance of an opportunity to remind her of it and she wants to kiss him till the world ends every time he does. Wants to put her lips on every inch of him, taste him and mark him and worship him until the only thing left in his mouth is her name.)

“Your arms,” he continues in a voice made hoarse by need, “your strong, strong arms.”

 _“Yes,”_ she moves up to slant her mouth over his, her hands blindly searching above their heads to tangle their fingers together as she presses the whole of her strong body into alignment with him, trailing wet kisses along his jaw all the while, _“Vax.”_

Her teeth find his earlobe and he hisses when she _bites_.

“Your lips—” moving suddenly Vax turns his head to the side, chasing her mouth to steal a kiss that’s as clumsy as it is eager, all softness and haste and only meant to be a fleeting thing but their lips catch and— _oh,_ how easy it is to fall like this, the gentle push-pull of kissing, the slow meet and part of lips and tongue as she grinds her hips down into his and hears his breath hitch in response. The motion drags his cock against her clit, the sudden stab of pleasure making her toes curl against the bed and her resolve waver dangerously—part of her wants to abandon the games and take him _now,_ this instant; wants to cut the green ribbon and let his hands free if only so he can hold on for dear _life_ as she rides him until her vision whites out and her limbs turn to liquid and they’re both lost, scattered, strung out on golden waves of sensation, but she thinks of how much higher she can take him first and, well—

—it’s never _not_ been worth the wait before.

“Your eyes,” Vax pulls back just far enough to touch their foreheads together, the warmth and adoration in his gaze tempering the intensity of the moment a little as it roams ceaselessly over her face. He grins, nuzzles his nose against hers with a tenderness that threatens to undo her in a different way altogether. “‘Specially when you look at me like you want to eat me.”

(Oh, she almost says: and if I do?)

“And your shoulders,” he leans up to press kisses to them, one then the other, lips trailing warm and lush across her collarbones, “strong enough to hold up the sky.” The moonlight catches in his hair when his head meets the pillow again and the dark sheen of it makes her think of the ocean, of unlit universes threaded through with the silvered rime of captured stars. It makes her think of floating.

It makes her think of flight.

“Your fingers,” he goes on, devouring her with his gaze, “and your legs— _gods,_ Kiki, your legs, all those miles. Want you to come sit on my face so I can die between them.”

The mouth on _him._ She can _feel_ the blush crawl across her cheeks at that, at the wicked glint in his eyes and the way he licks his lips like he can already taste her there. Unable to keep the faintly scandalised smile from her face she chastises his boldness with a firm roll of her hips, biting her lip so she doesn’t blurt out something careless about that being the _only_ way he’s allowed to die.

“And?” she whispers instead, shifting against him in light, deliberate movements until they’re both short for breath and her core clenches around nothing, aching to feel him so close and yet _not close enough._ “You’re doing so good, babe. What else?”

Vax tosses his head, beautiful and breathless and _desperate_ to move freely, to be inside her, to fall apart and feel _her_ fall apart around him. “You,” he says, “all of you, Kik, love you, I love you, I—” the litany of devotion spilling from his lips trails off into a shuddering moan as Keyleth sways up onto her haunches, keeping herself balanced with one hand on his lower stomach while the other reaches down to take him in hand and guide him home.

She sinks down in a smooth, unhurried motion, a low groan tearing from some place deep in her chest when he rocks his hips up to meet hers and sheathe himself fully inside her. For a few, precious seconds his mind goes blissfully clear, empty of everything but the sight of her above him haloed in moonlight, her body curving like a bow as she takes him to the hilt, and the soft noises that pass her lips as she adjusts around him and rakes her nails over his belly for more, her touch sparking bright blossoms of heat wherever her skin meets his.

She tenses around him and _stars,_ he’s so close already—how does she do it, how can the merest flex of her muscles around his cock be his utter _undoing_ —

Leaning forward onto her hands she heaves herself up again until he almost slides free of her, holding herself aloft for a few steadying heartbeats. The weight of her gaze settles on him and something inside Vax splinters, cracking open under the searching hunger in her face.

He wonders what it is that she’s seeing when she looks at him; if it’s only the desire to prolong his agony and the awareness that he’d lie here all night and _let her_ that keeps her poised so intently over him, or if she really can see all of him—if he truly is as naked in her eyes as he feels in this moment, no part of him inside or out that isn’t hers for the asking.

 _Need you,_ he whispers, or maybe he only thinks it, but the ravening light in her eyes sharpens and she nods, once.

Slowly—so slowly, a pace tended to tease, to _break_ —she begins to lower herself down again, taking him back inside her with little controlled undulations of her hips that have him close again in a matter of heartbeats and babbling utter _nonsense_ into her the air between them: her name and _fuck_ and _yes,_ letting her know in the scant bursts of breath her torturous movements spare him how _perfect_ she feels, how _tight,_ how close he is and how much he wants to make her feel good in return. The world narrows down to them—to her, Keyleth, incandescent, her body suffused with a soft-edged radiance in the moonlight, her lashes feathering shadows on her cheeks as her eyes flutter closed and her rosy lips part on a breath; starlight and wonder mingle in Vax’s sight and he’s caught there on the precipice of bliss, transfixed by the taut shift of muscle in her stomach and thighs, the way her breasts move as she works herself over him, alternating her rhythm to chase her pleasure and coax him with her toward climax.

She leans onto one hand, the other falling to find her clit and—no, that won’t do at _all_ —

“Let me,” breathes Vax, “Keyleth, beautiful, let _me_ —”

 _“Yeah,”_ eyes still closed, her head jerks in affirmation, _“please,”_ and it’s all the permission he needs to surge into action, his bound hand making a helpless fist against the pillow while the other flies down to take her place at the apex of her thighs and strike up the pattern he knows by heart—the tiny circles at varying pressures that leave her trembling and tightening around him in ways that go so far beyond _perfect_ he hasn’t the words for them.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ —” her hips stutter over his when Vax replaces his fingers with a thumb over her clit and presses, _hard_.

He lifts his head to watch her move, the slight pressure of the collar on his windpipe at this angle sending black spots dancing across his vision and pleasure lancing sharp and sweet the length of his spine. Her fingers flex over his abdomen as she hauls herself up again and her cunt clenches around him like she’s trying to actually _kill him_ —he’s not going to last much longer if she keeps on doing that and tells her so, which proves a mistake because it makes her _laugh_. The tremors of her mirth ripple through her to where they’re joined but Vax is too busy dying a thousand deaths to even register her hands falling to his chest again to push him unresisting into the mattress.

She picks up the pace, her thighs clamped about his waist as she rides him hard enough to _bruise_ but Vax keeps his thumb where she needs it, pulling all his scattered focus into working her valiantly towards her peak before him, and when she finally comes it’s with a shivery, drawn-out moan and a fluttering of her inner muscles that nearly does him in there and then.

Her orgasm leaves her slumped on her forearms across his chest, whimpering with the aftershocks as he shifts his hand to her hip to help guide their rhythm and give her clit a break.

“Feels so good,” she whispers hoarsely into his collarbone, “so good, baby,” and some small prideful part of him pipes up with the thought that if she’s still capable of coherent speech then clearly, he’s not working hard enough—and apparently Keyleth has the same notion, because even as she rains sloppy kisses along the line of the harness over his heart she’s reaching up to free his wrist from its bindings.

He brings his hand down immediately to cradle her jaw, coaxes her chin up to brush his mouth over hers as his fingers tangle in the copper cloud of her hair and hold her to him. A few perfect moments lost in kissing; the slow, needy drag of her hips against his, the realisation that he can taste blackberries on her tongue and then his hand is sliding down the sweat-slick length of their bodies, pausing only to pinch her nipple playfully before he finds her clit again. His thumb slips over her sensitive flesh and she _keens_ against his lips, and Vax recalls himself to gentleness despite the near-frantic need gripping him to wring another orgasm out of her, to make her come one more time before he lets himself chase that glowing spark of pleasure.

“You feel amazing,” she’s still whispering into the dampened skin of his temple, “I’m— _fuck, Vax,_ I’m _close_.”

“‘M’yours,” Vax murmurs into the corner of her mouth, drawing his legs up to plant his feet on the mattress so his thighs press against her backside and he can _thrust_.

 _Yours, yours, yours,_ his hips drive up into her with each ragged breath and the new angle makes Keyleth _sob_ into his mouth with the depth and pace it allows him. Her fingers twist into the silk over his chest, tugging on the collar and constricting his air supply just enough to tip Vax from light-headed into _delirious_ but his rhythm barely falters, relentless as he strokes her higher towards completion even as his own climax threatens to steal up on him and send him careening over the edge before her.

“C’mon, beautiful. Come for me,” he begs, calling on every inch of self-discipline left to him to keep from coming for _just a little longer—seconds, so close_ —but the twin sensations of her body gripping him and her mouth determinedly sucking bruises into his skin are more than enough to send Vax spiralling headlong into his release and—blessedly—pulling Keyleth along with him, her nails digging like pinpricks into his heaving chest as she tenses around him and comes apart with a faltering cry.

 

*

 

The moonlight rolling into the room seems to brighten as they catch their breath, painting the night in shades of silver and sable and picking out every mark they’ve left on one another’s skin. Eventually, Keyleth stirs, pushing herself upright, and the naked tenderness in her eyes as she runs her fingers lightly over the harness, plucking at it almost thoughtfully, keeps whatever Vax might’ve said in this moment mute in his chest.

Instead, he brings his hand up to cover hers, holding it above his heart.

“I know,” she says softly, her gaze flicking up to his. Her other hand comes up to brush a stray hair out of his face, tucking it carefully behind his ear. “I know you’re mine.”

Vax’s heart gives a squeeze at the quiet conviction in her voice.

Her fingers wrap around the silk over his heart and she ducks forward to bury her face in the crook of his neck, planting kiss after kiss along his pulse point. “I know,” she whispers there, low enough that he isn’t sure it’s meant for him, but when she moves away only far enough that she can press her lips to the nearest lovebite, and then the next, and her intent becomes clear to retrace every hurt her mouth and hands have left upon him and gentle their lingering aches away Vax loses his breath all over again because this—this _is_ for him, and somehow it demands more vulnerability of him than to lie there with his wrists bound and let her leave those marks in the first place.

It _flays_ him, this slow and thorough unravelling she puts him through, the lightness with which her touch skims over him and yet strips away layers as she goes, the way she cradles his wrist between her hands with such halting care as she kisses her way around the contusions there. She presses her mouth to the darker bruise on his chest and it feels like a promise, like the keeping of an unspoken vow between them, and when she shifts back slightly and he feels the slick mess between her legs Vax remembers that he’d made something of a promise of his own.

Keyleth grimaces faintly, becoming aware of it too. “I gotta get up,” she sighs, unwilling to move just yet, but before she can slide off him Vax brings his hands up to rest at her waist, squeezing gently as he stares up into her questioning eyes.

“What?” she tilts her head to one side, the corner of her mouth quirking curiously.

“Nothing.” He takes a moment just to look at her, the loveliest image of sated disarray he’s ever seen. She’s a thing of glory, all flushed skin and wild hair, the moonlight flooding in through the window shattering in her eyes to pierce his heart as he loses it all over again to the sight of her. His cock gives a valiant twitch of interest when her tongue darts out to wet her kiss-flushed lips but it’ll be a little while yet before he’s up to the task again, and besides—he can’t get the thought of tasting her out of his head now.

Lifting his head, Vax pushes the pillows to one side to let him lie flat. “C’mere,” he mutters, sliding his hands down over her hips to hook them under her thighs and haul her up over him so he can get at her with his mouth.

His eagerness makes her snort but he’s been so _good_ tonight, made her come twice and seems determined to make it a third, so she goes where he guides her, lifting her hands to brace on the wall as she settles her knees on either side of his head.

“Told you I wanted to,” he reminds her, then goes quiet, too busy mouthing kisses over every inch of her he can reach, in no hurry to get where he’s going when the night stretches out ahead of them and morning might never come and, maybe, if they’re lucky, it never will. She hums contentedly as he nibbles at the silvery marks on the softest part of her thigh, one hand falling to dig into his hair when he finally parts her lips with his thumbs and moves his mouth where she needs him to lick a wide, hot stripe over her cunt. _Oh._ Her legs tighten reflexively about his head as she rocks into him, his name tripping off her lips on a ragged moan at the lazy flick of his tongue over her overstimulated core.

He pulls away briefly and presses a damp grin into her thigh. “I could do this forever,” he says, and then his mouth’s zeroing in on her clit and _gods,_ she’s there, somehow, already, her insides twisting as that sweet-sharp tension begins to build again and it’s too _much,_ the way he switches between pressure and teasing lightness; the way one hand returns to her waist to rub soothing circles into her hipbone when she shudders and whines above him like some lost, wanton creature, the other sliding between her legs to press two fingers inside her. He curls them just right and Keyleth cries out, her grip tightening in his hair and making him _groan_ against her cunt; her free hand falls from the wall to join his at her hip and tangle their fingers together as she curves into him, gives herself over to the cresting flame of pleasure his mouth stokes in her core.

It comes up on her like a tide, this time, spreading through her body in a slow rush until Vax crooks his fingers and gives a hard _suck_ against her clit and—“oh, fuck, _fuck,”_ —the tension in her belly winds taut and snaps and Keyleth _wails,_ waves of pleasure turning her to liquid gold as her body flares into light once more and she’s coming, hard, on his hand and his mouth, words of love and praise spilling from her lips like honey and Vax’s touch there to steady her as she plummets from the starry heights of her third _(third!)_ climax, his fingers fucking her steadily through the aftershocks, working her until she’s whining and tugging his head away from lips gone slick with her and curved into a deeply satisfied smile.

Her breath comes ragged and her pulse races, her heart in murmuration like starlings in the evening air, but gradually the earth rises up beneath her again and Vax’s arms come up to cradle her before she hits the ground.

Gingerly, she shuffles back down until she’s straddling his chest, the ring at the centre of the harness cool against her thigh as she slumps down over him and lets her chin rest on his shoulder. “Holy shit,” she mumbles, laughter threading through her voice, and then he’s joining her, hiding his smile in the crook of her neck as his arms wrap around her back and pull her close.

She feels weightless, beloved, treasured in his embrace and about as well-fucked as she’s ever been. She can feel his heart thrumming away where her body and his press close, as rapid as the flight of birds in her own ribs.

If she were to open herself up now, she thinks, they would fly free, the unbearable lightness pushing against her skin from the inside would be released and maybe it would take the fear with it—the fear that she won’t always have this, that Vax and his love are more of a gift than she was ever supposed to have and one day the universe might choose to redress that imbalance.

Instead, she pushes herself up a little so she can look down into the fathomless softness of his eyes, and nudge the tip of his nose with hers before mumbling, sleepy and contented, “kiss me.”

He does, brushing his lips over every inch of her skin he can reach without dislodging her; her brow, her nose, her eyelids, her cheeks, her chin, finally coming back to capture her mouth in the gentlest of kisses.

He stays awake only as long as it takes to help her unwind the harness from his torso and replace the pillow under his head, but by the time she’s tossed the garment aside and tugged the sheets up around their bodies he’s already drifting away from her, his breathing slowing, a different peace slipping over his features as oblivion claims his worn-out mind. Keyleth lies there for a while after, half-sprawled across his chest.

The same peace evades her. Her mind moves restlessly, conscious of the slowly-spreading mark under her cheek and the faint whispering of wings out in the night: she twines her fingers with Vax's and takes comfort from the warmth of his skin, still flushed from exertion, and the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath her ear. She listens to the sound of his heart, counts each beat and pretends it's only to lull herself to sleep, and not to reassure herself that he is still with her in the darkness, not lost somewhere beyond it.

**Author's Note:**

> inspiration for the harness, and indeed the prompt for the fic → {[x](http://beartier.tumblr.com/post/162448465767/socialpsychopathblr-lovechild-boudoir)} {[x](http://www.malicelingerie.com/)} (second link slightly nsfw)
> 
> title from 'of wants' by [poetofblues](https://www.instagram.com/p/BVW6ZjNDcR9/?taken-by=poetofblues). i had a better one but i forgot to write it down and, well,


End file.
